


One Last Time

by Angy98



Series: Till Death Do Us Reunite [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26377873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angy98/pseuds/Angy98
Summary: Gabriel had read many books about the paranormal, when he was a kid, and he’d grown familiar with the illustrations depicting the most common creatures.He expected ghosts – if they were to exist – to look like those scary, pale creatures he’d read about, the ones with long, worn out nightgowns that float in the wind, and blank glowing eyes that stare deep into your soul.But the woman in front of him looked nothing like those kinds of ghosts.- - - - -A Sequel to my fanfiction "Everything She Was"
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Series: Till Death Do Us Reunite [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926325
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23
Collections: GabeNath Book Club and Art Club Server





	One Last Time

It was a quiet night in Paris, even though it surely couldn’t be defined peaceful by some of its inhabitants.

At two in the morning, Gabriel Agreste was still lying awake in his bed. He’d tossed and turned around, but sleep never seemed to come. When Emilie fell asleep next to him he stopped moving in order not to wake her up. Ever since that moment, he’d been staring to what he could make out of the chandelier on the ceiling, lost in his thoughts.

Eventually, he decided to try to get up and take a walk around the house.

Slowly, he moved his legs out of the bed and sat up. But just as he thought that he’d been moving soundlessly enough, Emilie’s voice called for him. “Gabriel?” The blonde woman turned on her side facing him, rubbing her eyes. “Where are you going, dear?”

Gabriel turned to his wife. “I can’t sleep, I’m going to take some fresh air,” he replied quietly. “Go back to your golden dreams, darling.” He then added, planting a kiss on her forehead.

As Gabriel wandered around for the empty halls of his mansion, he couldn’t help but notice how cold the house was despite the warm spring weather outside, and how deafening silence could actually be. He reached for Adrien’s bedroom’s door handle, about to check up on his son, but then he remembered that the boy was probably out with Ladybug patrolling the city.

Father and son had barely spoken to each other, since the day Gabriel defeated the heroes stealing their Miraculouses.

Gabriel sighed, stepping away from the door. If Adrien already hated him for being Hawkmoth and blamed him for Nathalie’s death, how would he react if he told him he no longer felt the same towards the same woman he’d almost destroyed Paris for?

The man walked on, directed to his studio. Maybe he could try to unwind by drawing.

Gabriel entered the room, his steps growing slower and heavier as he approached the painting that represented his wife. The wide canvas, along with a few other objects in the room, still showed signs of the damage that Gabriel inflicted a few days ago, when he’d turned the entire room upside down in an attack of anger.

The fashion designer sighed, then went to open the window. When he turned back, he almost had a heart attack. There was a woman in the room right in the spot where he’d just been standing. She was giving him her back, seemingly ignoring his presence as she intently stared at Emilie’s portrait.

“Excuse me?” Gabriel exclaimed, marching towards the intruder. “Who are you, and how did you break into-“ He tried to put an hand on her shoulder, but gasped in surprise as his fingers ran through her.

The woman turned around.

Gabriel had read many books about the paranormal, when he was a kid, and he’d grown familiar with the illustrations depicting the most common creatures.

He expected ghosts – if they were to exist – to look like those scary, pale creatures he’d read about, the ones with long, worn out nightgowns that float in the wind, and blank glowing eyes that stare deep into your soul.

But the woman in front of him looked nothing like those kinds of ghosts.

She wasn’t scary, she could have never been.

She was dressed in her everyday work outfit, complete from her dark gray blazer down to her usual heels. The only odd thing was her hair, now untied and flowing down along her shoulders.

And her eyes, although wide in surprise, were the same azure, deep ponds he’d found himself lost in quite a few times.

Gabriel took a few steps back, unable to believe his eyes. “N-N…Nathalie?” He stuttered, his heart pounding in fear.

But soon enough, the rational side of his brain ordered him to calm down. Ghosts didn’t exists; it was probably his grief and his sleep deprivation playing a trick on his mind. “Now I’m even hallucinating!” He exclaimed, as soon as he was able to catch his breath.

Nathalie shook her head, mouthing a _‘no’_. The woman pointed to herself and then to the ground.

“Wait…You’re real?”

The ghost nodded, patting a hand on her chest and then pointing again to the ground. _‘I’m here.’_

Gabriel slowly walked towards her, his mouth opening and closing as he tied to find words to say. “How?” he eventually whispered, astonished.

Nathalie shrugged. Judging by the look on her face, she couldn’t believe it either. She pointed to Gabriel, then to her eyes, and lastly to her chest with a questioning gaze in her eyes.

“What? What does it mean?” But all she did was repeating the same three movements, albeit a little slower.

She was looking at him expectantly, but he was still to shocked to fully comprehend what was happening. Something eventually clicked in Gabriel’s mind, as he tried to find the meaning behind her gestures. “You’re…asking me if I can see you?” He tried, and she nodded in reply. “I do, but…Why aren’t you speaking?”

_‘Balance’_ , Nathalie replied, moving her hands up and down, one next to the other to emulate the pans of a scale.

She pointed to herself, and Gabriel got ready to try and guess once again her gestures: “You.” The ghost raised a finger to her lips “…were silent?”

Long ago, he had read something about equivalent punishments that awaited those who committed a sin in their lives. Poor Nathalie…

But if she’d lost her ability to speak as a punishment… “What was it that you didn’t say?”

The ghost repeated _‘I was silent’_ and then pointed to a height next to her. “Short,” Gabriel tried to guess, but Nathalie shook her head. “Little?” This time he saw her nod. “Cat,” Gabriel then said when she brought her hands up to her head, to imitate cat ears.

Nathalie pointed again to herself, then moved to blow an imaginary something away from the palm of her hand.

Following her movements, Gabriel pieced her sentence back together. “You didn’t tell the little cat that you were Mayura. You didn’t tell Adrien!”

In a second round of guesses, Nathalie said _‘I lied to everyone.’_

In a third round, after repeating _‘I didn’t tell’_ , Nathalie pointed to Gabriel. “You didn’t tell me…” The man spoke, following her clues. She pointed to herself “…that you”. She made the shape of a heart on her chest “…love”.

Gabriel gasped when the ghost pointed once again towards him. “…me!” He exclaimed surprised. “You didn’t tell me _you loved me_!”

Gabriel moved towards Nathalie, suddenly feeling the need to reach for her.

Maybe if she held him like she always did, that sudden, unbearable pain in his chest would somehow be eased. “Oh, Nath…!”

She reciprocated him!

Lord, had he only realized sooner!

But as Gabriel once again passed through her, his heart only sank more. The man took a step back, his eyes filling with tears. “Well, this is just unfortunate, isn’t it?” He admitted, shaking his head.

Nathalie hid in her shoulders and looked away sadly. The ghost shrugged, before turning again to face Mr. Agreste. _‘It’s ok, you love Emilie.’_

“No, you don’t- you don’t understand!” Gabriel exclaimed. “I- I realized it a few days ago,” he explained, his voice shaking. The man pointed to himself, then made a shape of an heart with his hands and pointed to Nathalie. “I love you too!” He started to cry.

Nathalie was left gaping. As soon as she recovered from the unexpected news, however, the ghost quickly floated towards Gabriel, placing her hands on his cheeks even though he couldn’t feel her. She wanted to hold him, to comfort him and dry his tears, but without a tangible body or a voice to do so, the only thing she could do was staying close and wait for him to calm down.

When Gabriel fell to his knees, Nathalie knelt down at his side, wrapping her arms around his body. She held him and rubbed his back until, eventually, his sobs died out.

The man shifted position, crossing his legs. For the longest time, he couldn’t find anything to say, still lost in his misery. “How long will you stay?” He eventually spoke, his voice hoarse from crying.

 _‘Little,’_ she replied.

“Would you mind if we…if we talked until you…?”

Nathalie smiled. _‘Of course not!’_

The woman moved to sit across from him on the floor. _‘Go on,’_ she prodded him.

“How long have you been…” Gabriel searched for the right word. “…haunting this house for?”

_‘As early as I died, probably.’_

“Why am I only able to see you now, then?”

Nathalie furrowed her brows, trying to wrap her mind around the mysterious mechanism behind the magic that was allowing them to meet one last time. _‘I don’t know,’_ she shrugged.

Gabriel had come up with so many unanswered question, since the day she left; questions that added to the life-long ones about whether the afterlife actually existed and what could it be like.

But they had very little time on their hands, and he wasn’t going to waste it by talking about the occult.

It was like two friends who meet to catch up about their lives before one of them will take a train directed to somewhere far, never to be seen again.

Gabriel told Nathalie about how much Adrien missed her, and she replied that she already knew it, that she was moved by the boy’s affection, and that she was always there to watch over him as he slept. The ghost then wanted to know about Emilie, about how she was doing, and Gabriel told her about how media reacted to her return and about the latest movie she was acting in.

When they occasionally stumbled across a particularly difficult concept, or words that Nathalie found hard to translate in her improvised sign language, a shared laughter always followed the initial frustration.

They were joking and smiling together in spite of the surreal situation, their interactions flowing as naturally as they had always been.

“Have you met Claude, by chance?” Gabriel asked at some point.

Nathalie nodded, giggling.

“He’s… terrible.” Gabriel chuckled in turn, not a single hint of anger in his word. He was exhausted, tired out by the long sleepless night and by the time he’d spent crying.

“He’s a sweet soul, I know, but he keeps messing up my fabric orders, and my appointments, and…” He trailed off. Nathalie had reached out for him, placing a hand above his arm.

This time, she didn’t need any gesture to communicate; Gabriel could already read everything from the soft scolding gaze she was giving him. Gabriel couldn’t feel the way her thumb was caressing his forearm, but he remembered as clear as day the soothing sensation it gave him from the last time she’d done it.

_‘You’re too hard on Claude. You have to give him time to learn!’_

His heart ached again. “I miss you so much…”

 _‘I miss you too…!’_ Nathalie smiled softly. The ghost motioned for him to wait, then started forming a series of shapes with her fingers.

“We…together…a long time. We will be together for a long time?” Gabriel tried to piece her sentence together. The ghost nodded, but then added an _‘almost’_. “Oh. We’ll be together, eventually” Mr. Agreste tried again, suddenly understanding the meaning behind her words. “You mean when I’ll…”

Nathalie nodded again. “I promise,” he read from her next gesture.

She was smiling hopeful, probably picturing the life their souls were going to share, but in spite of her attempts to cheer him up, Gabriel still felt at his worse.

How could she still find it in herself to smile at him like that?

How could she still look at him with all of that love after he’d ruined her life – and her afterlife too, for the lies and crimes she never confessed all originated from his own secrets and actions?

“I messed up so badly, my dear Nath…” He said, holding a hand up next to her cheek. “I got it all wrong! Everything we fought so hard for was wrong and vain… I always had everything I needed right by my side, and I never even noticed it!” He felt his eyes starting to prickle once again. “And now you’re gone, Adrien hates me and I lost everything! How will I ever be able to spend a whole life without you?”

Nathalie frowned, hastily moving away from his touch. She moved a fist down to the palm of her other hand. She pointed to Gabriel, then motioned for him to repeat after her.

 _‘You’re strong, Gabriel! You have to find your peace!’_ Nathalie exhorted him. _‘Please! Do it for Adrien and Emilie.’_

Gabriel nodded silent, but she could still see the doubts lingering in his eyes. The woman placed a hand on his own. _‘Do it for me.’_

This time, the man nodded a little more firmly, trying to smile to her. _“And, please, no Miraculouses!”_ Nathalie admonished sternly, earning a tired laughter from Gabriel.

He had actually thought about it on multiple occasions, in the moments where his pain reached its highest peaks. But the plan never lasted long, because the thought of having to go through that never-ending battle all over again was exhausting beyond compare.

It wasn’t that Nathalie wasn’t worth it – she would have been worth anything in this world. It was the fact that he knew that it wasn’t going to work a second time. Hell, it hadn’t even worked in the first place!

Not even two kwamis that could grant him every wish imaginable were able to fix his mistakes.

He just had to accept the fact that he wasn’t destined to be happy, and that all of that mess was already a punishment for his evil actions.

The most cruel punishment of them all, he thought as he stared into Nathalie’s friendly blue eyes.

After some more moments, the woman stood up from the ground. “Is it already time for you to go?” Gabriel asked following her suit.

Nathalie nodded sadly. “I don’t want you to leave!” He replied, holding his hands next to her shoulders.

 _‘I’ll always be around, I promise,’_ the ghost reassured him. _‘I’ll watch you from above,’_ she then communicated, pointing to the ceiling. _‘An I’ll pray for you and your family.’_

Then, Nathalie moved closer, wrapping Gabriel in what would have been a warm and tender hug. Fresh tears spilled from Gabriel’s eyes as he raised his arms to reciprocate the hug, but concretely hugging nothing but thin air.

The man closed his eyes, trying to imagine what it would have been like to actually have her in his arms.

When he opened them again, she was gone.


End file.
